Welcome!
We are the excited authors of No More Dirty Looks: The Truth About Your Beauty Products, and the Ultimate Guide to Safe and Clean Cosmetics. That’s Siobhan O’Connor on the left, and Alexandra Spunt on the right. We’re best friends and we’re journalists—and we also share a way-too-long history of product obsession.
A few years back we went for the then-new (and very expensive) Brazilian blowout. Sold to us as a healthy keratin treatment for our hair, the Brazilian, we later discovered, was actually laced with formaldehyde. The eye-burning fumes probably should have tipped us off, but we’d be lying if we said we gave it a second thought at the time. We were just psyched about how great our hair was going to look. Anyway, you can read all about it in our book, but it was this experience (and the self-diagnosing Google panic that ensued) that made us wonder for the first time: What the hell is in our beauty products, anyways? And once we figured out that they were loaded with all kinds of sketchy chemicals, we wondered: Does anyone have our backs when it comes to safety? The answer to the latter is a big, fat no.
We wanted to write something for women much like us—that is, women who love products but who also care about the planet, and don’t want to sacrifice their health for their looks (or vice versa).
We’ll tell you now: Our year of experimenting with what we call “clean” beauty garnered better results than almost everything we’d tried before. And we’ve tried a lot.
In the book we look at the lack of regulation in the industry and try to make sense of some of the confusing science around long-term low-dose chemical exposure, because our bodies absorb up to 60% of what we put on them, and the cosmetics business uses over 10,000 chemicals in their products—many of them with woefully inadequate safety data written about them.
Over the last two years, we trolled countless scientific journals and databases, we spoke to experts, and we asked questions—over and over again—until somebody would answer us. But the book is not all serious! It’s also an exhaustive guide to the most effective clean products on the market, tested by us. (And in the few cases where we didn’t fit the guinea-pig bill, for aesthetic or racial reasons, we turned to trusted friends.)
This site will be done in the same spirit. We plan to post frequently about everything from the latest research, to the latest blushes. There will be beauty tips, and new clean-product finds. There will also be rants about things that piss us off, like the fact that there was lead in every lipstick the FDA tested not too long ago.
We’re excited to hear from you—whether you’re already a converted clean girl, or whether you think we’re full of crap. It’s the discussion that counts, so we hope you’ll take part.
Ladies, I would not be so rude as to tell you that you are full of crap, but I am afraid that much of what you say on this page is based on vague internet rumour, rather than good science. I note that elsewhere you refer to the Skin Deep database as a good source of information. This database may give you information, but it does not give ANY true indication of the actual safety of any cosmetic product because it only highlights the hazards associated with any specific ingredient. It is not possible to assess the safety of any substance based on the hazard alone – the exposure must be taken into consideration so that the risk may be properly asssessed. I have written more on these specific topics (ie, Risk and Skin Deep) on the Personal Care Truth web site, and I strongly recommend that you pay it a visit.
The story about up to 60% of cosmetics being absorbed on the skin is another internet myth and it has it’s roots in a study conducted in Italy using excised rabbit skin, and only tested 4 cosmetic ingredients. The authors claimed that this was a good model for human skin, but this is very difficult to substantiate, as dead rabbit skin does not behave in the same manner as live human skin.
The claimed lack of regulation from the FDA is grossly exaggerated, and most of the ingredients used in cosmetics in the USA are also used in the European Union, which has VERY stringent regulations covering chemical substances.
Have a look at http://www.personalcaretruth.com and go through all the different posts – there is a lot of useful information there. The title of the site is self-explanatory!
Dene,
I looked up your website as well as your personal bio. According to your website, you “worked for one of the largest manufacturers of parabens from 1992 – 2002, and currently works for a UK company involved in the distribution of ingredients for cosmetics, health care and food.” It seems to me that your perspective might be a tad biased, wouldn’t you say?
On the other hand, Spunt and O’Connor, who are both dear friends of mine, have no underlying agenda. Rather, they are trying to help people help themselves by making sure that the products they use are safe and clean. You may want to get technical on them- they do not profess to be scientific experts- but I think they speak for every day consumers who need to know the content of what they are applying to their bodies. They sum it up as follows with their mantra: “If you can’t be sure a product is safe—and it’s not doing your looks any favors—why bother using it?”
I for one am happy that these two “non-experts” are investigating what currently inhabits my medicine cabinet and I would trust them far more than someone who works in the manufacturing of parabens!
Erika
Wow, everyone should be so lucky as to have a friend like Erika! Not only is she smart as whip (doing her masters in law no less), but look at this defense. Thanks for taking the time to post this Er. As for Dene, I do hope you’ll check out the book and see that we actually worked very hard to find the most accurate sources we could, and often relied upon input from people within the cosmetics industry.